2013 Forty Under 40 Winner: Hannah Inman

Thursday, February 28, 2013 3:27 PM

Age 34 | Director of communications, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation

We’ve all said it: There are only so many hours in a day. Here’s how Hannah Inman fills them.

Since 2011, she has been the director of communications for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. That’s a full-time job in which she has redesigned the conservation organization’s 33-year-old magazine, formed alliances with businesses to expand its reach and joined the communications team that helped pass a major conservation bond issue last year in Polk County.

She is the co-owner of two businesses. Maverly Lands is an agribusiness that repurposes shipping containers into multilevel hydroponic farms that produce organic microgreens and herbs. And she handles the marketing chores for KDC Built, a home-building operation that she owns with her husband, Mike. The business was launched during the financial crisis. It survived.

The home-building business donates the proceeds from one house to charity. The idea of growing food in a controlled, environmentally friendly environment – she says that five levels inside a storage container can produce the equivalent of 1.5 acres of land – suits her mission to provide healthy food to “everyone.”

“It’s my passion product,” she said. Inman would like for homeless people to learn to grow food in the containers.

Inman also is mom to Maverick, 6, who just lost his first tooth, and Everly, 19 months, who peppers her chatter with the word “no.”

Though busy enough for many people, Inman also is something of a Greater Des Moines recruiting tool. A Kansas native who attended college at the University of Iowa, she recruited her brothers and their families to the city after moving here with her husband.

“Her energy, vision, charisma and excitement are contagious,” said Robert Stewart, vice president at CBRE/Hubbell Commercial.

Five reasons she’s a 40:

• Part of a three-person communications team for the Polk County Water and Land Legacy Bond, the state’s largest conservation bond issue, which was approved by more than 72 percent of voters.